Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is one of the many Democratic politicians vying for their party’s nomination to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, but since announcing his candidacy, Booker’s campaign has largely floundered among the second-tier of presidential hopefuls.

In what is quite possibly an effort to distance himself from his fellow candidates, Booker has of late taken an exceptionally extreme position in favor of gun control and in opposition to the fundamental freedom of gun ownership that is enshrined and protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Booker may have gone too far with his anti-gun rhetoric, however, as even The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column felt the need to call out the senator for playing incredibly fast and loose with the truth when it comes to governmental regulations on firearms.

In a recent post to Medium, Booker laid out more than a dozen half-baked and likely unconstitutional proposals related to gun control that he would pursue if elected.

At one point in the senator’s anti-gun screed, he wrote, “Nowadays, there is more regulation over toy guns than real ones. While medicine, children’s toys, and any number of other consumer products are subject to regulation by the federal government, firearms are exempt.”

“In other words, gun manufacturers have little incentive to make their products safer. Cory will work to close this loophole in federal oversight and allow the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ensure gun safety by making safety warnings and issuing recalls for faulty firearms,” he added.

Since the publication of that post, Booker has proceeded to utter the same talking point — toy guns are more regulated than real guns — in media appearances and on social media.

There’s just one problem, though — Booker is flat-out wrong in his assertion, as was explained by The Post’s Glenn Kessler, who ultimately awarded Booker three Pinocchios for his false claims.

The Post “Fact Checker” noted that Booker’s talking point was rather standard fare from the anti-gun crowd, and while Booker may have been partially correct in noting that the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t regulate firearms — the CPSC is explicitly prohibited from doing so by law — that doesn’t mean that firearms are entirely unregulated, as folks like Booker are counting on people to believe.

“But there are clearly many laws and regulations governing the sale, distribution and use of guns,” Kessler wrote, pointing to the ban on civilian ownership of automatic machine guns and bump stocks as just two examples. Kessler further noted that, per a prior fact-check some six years ago, there are at least 300 statutes on the federal level governing firearms.

Furthermore, just like every other product sold to consumers, firearms manufacturers are liable for lawsuits stemming from product malfunctions. Kessler pointed out that Remington just settled a major lawsuit in 2018 over defective trigger mechanisms, and noted that the industry has voluntarily set stringent product safety and design standards for themselves.

Kessler also noted that the so-called “exemption” from liability that the anti-gun crowd deliberately misinterpret as protecting the entire firearms industry from any lawsuits or regulations is actually narrowly tailored against lawsuits stemming from the criminal misuse of firearms. Such lawsuits would be akin to someone suing Ford or General Motors for the actions of a drunk driver using one of their vehicles.

A spokesman for the trade association that oversees the firearms industry, Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told Kessler, “Our industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the country. No other industry is regulated at the federal, state and local level to the extent our industry is regulated, which include design and performance standards.”

“The federal agencies that regulate the industry include ATF, FBI, State Department, Commerce Department, IRS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. No other consumer product requires the licensed dealer to conduct a criminal-background check on a prospective purchaser before they can sell the product. Firearm manufacturers can be sued for product defect claims, although such claims are exceedingly rare given that there are over 400 million firearms in civilian possession in the United States,” Oliva added.

As for toy guns, Kessler determined that the only real regulation on the “sale, distribution and ownership of toy guns” is the requirement that such toys feature a bright orange tip on the muzzle to differentiate them from actual firearms.

Kessler concluded that Booker’s un-nuanced comparison of toy guns and real guns was “specious” at best, and in delivering the senator his three Pinocchios for the false claims, wrote:

“The CPSC does not regulate guns, but it does regulate toy guns. That does not mean there are ‘more regulations’ of toy guns than real ones. Firearms, at just about every level, are highly regulated in the United States. Booker is calling for another level of regulation, but he can’t suggest toy guns are even more highly regulated.”

So, Booker’s been called out by one of the most influential newspapers among American liberals as not telling the truth about one of the left’s favorite issues.

That’s one way of differentiating himself from the pack of Democratic hopefuls, but it might not have been what the senator was shooting for.